


Between Faith and Fragility

by Shadsie



Category: Fire Emblem: Kakusei | Fire Emblem: Awakening
Genre: Bad Future, Drama, F/M, Family, Future of Despair Timeline, Gen, Kids asking awkward questions, Libra is a man's man and don't you forget it, Magic, Medicine, Morgan's happy life with loving parents before it all went to Hell, Orphanage, Prayer, Tragedy, War, War...War never changes, family life, future past timeline, light comedy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-01
Updated: 2016-08-01
Packaged: 2018-07-28 14:34:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,739
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7644754
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shadsie/pseuds/Shadsie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Morgan was an only child who grew up in a loud house full of siblings.  He was raised in an orphanage by both of his parents. His mother had a “man’s job” and his father looked like a refined lady.   He wasn't as confused as his parents' friends thought he should be.  He was a very lucky boy.  At least, he'd had a happy life before war took it all away from him.  </p><p>The life of Morgan as fathered by Libra in one of the Bad Timelines before and up to the time it went bad.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Between Faith and Fragility

**Author's Note:**

> **Disclaimer and Notes:** Fire Emblem belongs to Nintendo. No profit is sought. After a round of Fates: Conquest, I got back into playing Awakening again, namely, re-assuming my female-unit file in which I wanted to marry Libra. Building up to the rescue of my shiny, pretty new blond-haired model of Morgan, I developed headcanons for the family (much as I’ve done for my Chrobin-family and the Panne/Robin-family). I got an idea for this story set in the Bad Timeline and/or Future Past / Despair Timeline. I did not name or describe appearance-details of the Avatar in this, so you can imagine her as “default Robin” or as being by any name and female-build that you want. Enjoy!

**Between Faith and Frailty**

Morgan was an only child who grew up in a loud house full of siblings.  He was raised in an orphanage by both of his parents. His mother had a “man’s job” and his father looked like a refined lady. 

 

Through it all, he was not as confused as so many adults in his life thought that he should be.  After all, his parents had built the orphanage between the wars; it would be natural that he would be raised there along with all of the non-blood kids they took in.  And, after all, his parents were his parents – just uniquely themselves and the only ones he ever knew.

 

Morgan felt blessed in multiple ways.  He had a very lucky life.  He never wanted for anyone his own age or close to his own age to play with and he got to have brothers and sisters from many backgrounds.  Most were Ylissean, but some of the kids his family’s place took in were Plegian and there were even a few unfortunate kids that Uncle Virion had directed over from Valm and Rossanne.  He was always a little sad when one of them had to leave, but those were always sweet partings, knowing that his friends were going to get to have families like his, with a Mom and a Dad, or maybe something less common, but with as much love.  He kept in touch with letters – at least when he’d started learning to read and with those siblings who were old enough to gain the skill by the time they’d been adopted. 

 

He was also blessed because among all of the adults Morgan knew, his mother had the biggest brain and his father had the biggest heart. His mother was a tactician and advisor to the Exalt and his father was a priest of Naga.  He’d been told all of his life by his parents’ friends that they were opposites, but Morgan didn’t see it.  To him, they were both hardworking and caring, though they often didn’t have as much time for him as he would have liked.  Such was life when shared with multiple children and when one’s mother had important political duties.   

 

From what he’d heard both about them and in what little bits of their pasts they had been willing to share with him, that they’d both had hard childhoods, which was why they worked so hard to make things better for the kids they took in.  Morgan never knew his grandparents.  He knew of them and what he knew of them made him hope never to meet them.  His father had been abandoned as a child and had scars from their abuse, both emotional and physical.  His mother had been born into fanatical cult specifically to be a sacrifice to the god opposite of the one his father worshipped.

 

 Scratch the not wanting to meet the grandparents thing – Morgan grew up desperately wanting to meet his maternal grandmother, for the tales about her painted her as a very brave woman.  However, it was not possible, as she was long-deceased.  His mother told him of how Grandmom had spirited her away from her cult-leader father and how she had spent her childhood hopping from town to town in the Ylissean mountains trying to escape the attention of the Grimleal.  It had worked, eventually, allowing her to be raised in peace in a hunting village by a single parent during her early teen years, but she had basically grown up as a perpetual refugee.  The whole story had made Morgan stop to wonder, every once in a while, why his mother didn’t run screaming from any mention of religion whatsoever and wound up marrying his incredibly devout father, his being of a different religion than the one she had been born into notwithstanding.  She told him simply that there was a difference between fanaticism and true faith.  Her father had the former, while Dad had the latter. 

 

“When you don’t know the will of Naga,” his father had told him once, “and you’re asking for the right thing to do, just look into your heart and ask yourself ‘what is born of love?’ or ‘what will effect the greater good?’  That’s all you really need to know.”

 

Those words stayed with young Morgan, right up to the day he lost his faith, which was the day his parents didn’t come home to him.  Until then, he learned strategy, tactics and magic from his mother, the art of healing and the healing power of art from his father, and how to love from the both of them. 

 

He took after his mother more in many ways.  He was fascinated by her strategy boards and games that she taught him and by what she did at the palace in Ylisstol.  When he was deemed mature enough (which actually didn’t take long as he was what everyone called “precocious”), he made trips with his mother, living in the castle with her for weeks at a time.  He sometimes felt lonely on these trips, since he wasn’t surrounded by loud youngsters, but he played with the eldest princess, Lucina and the royal sister-son, Owain when he was shooed away from tagging along with Mother. 

 

After these trips, as amazing as living like royalty was, he was always glad to come home, too.  The orphanage was a far cry from palace-etiquette.  The children there were taught manners, but Morgan’s father was a patient person who put up with much more from children than he did from his fellow adults.  In fact, Mother accused him of being downright indulgent at times.  Where he would flinch away at any adult other than Mother so much as clapping him on the shoulder (an involuntary side-effect of his painful childhood, Morgan had learned), Morgan and his brothers and sisters could climb all over him.  It sometimes became a game they called “Scaling Mount Libra.” Father also didn’t mind being called “Mama” by some of the younger children who made a common, innocent mistake, nor by the older children who took to teasing him.  It eventually evolved into a term of endearment. 

 

The boy did not understand why so many people thought his father looked like a mother. To Morgan, his father was a man’s man. He chopped wood and hauled water.  He had a big, broad chest and a strong jaw (beneath the mop of hair he always kept long). 

 

One merchant’s visit to the orphanage had left Morgan asking his mother a question that made her blush one afternoon, after the merchant had gone.  An eight-year-old Morgan had overheard some conversation out in the reception-area. 

 

“Mother, what’s a lesbian?” he’d asked, tugging on her coat as she sat in her little backroom office, going over the orphanage’s monthly budgets. 

 

“Wha? Where did you hear that word, honey?” she’d asked.

 

“The man out in the hall.”

 

“Oh, that…” she’d said awkwardly. Her cheeks turned a shade of red to rival the tomatoes being grown in the facility-garden. “Well, it’s… It’s when a woman loves other women very much – and wants another woman to be her sweetheart.”

 

“So, it’s when a woman wants to marry another woman?” Morgan had asked then, “That’s a lesbian?”

 

“Um… yes…” his mother had struggled. She cleared her throat uncomfortably.  “They aren’t very common, but love happens.” 

 

“Why was that man you saw today asking if you and Dad were lesbians, then?” Morgan then inquired.  “Dad is a man!” 

 

“Uh… Sweetie…” his mother had tried valiantly to explain, “Your father is a man, but a lot of people think he looks like a woman.  He gets mistaken for one by people who don’t know us.  It’s a shame, really.  Not everyone looks closely.” 

 

“I don’t get it,” Morgan had huffed.  “I want to grow up to be manly like Dad. He’s big and strong!” 

 

“He’d be glad to hear you say that.” 

 

“Maybe if he grew a beard,” Young Morgan had suggested.  “He shaves almost every morning.  Only men have beards, right?” 

 

The boy had not been prepared for the startled look that his mother had given him.  Her eyes had suddenly become like the eyes of a Taguel caught off-guard by the flash of a lightning-spell, or, indeed, like the faces of some of the kids newly taken-in who’d come from of the worst backgrounds whenever they heard a loud noise or were approached too quickly. 

 

“I can’t even imagine your father with a beard!” she’d said, laughing.  “And I don’t think it would help.  I think most people would take him to be a bearded-lady and treat him even worse!”

 

“So don’t tell Father he should grow a beard?

 

“Heavens no!”  She’d then leaned over and whispered in his ear. “Don’t tell him this, but… I really like him ‘pretty.’ He doesn’t like words like that, though, so we’re always to tell him that he’s ‘handsome.”

 

 

 

 

 

He’d watched his father channel the “sacred energies of life” through holy-magic staves ever since he was born – healing cuts and scrapes on members of the household.  He’d tried to help when Kait got that huge gash on his head when he fell trying to climb a bookshelf.  Uncle Gaius had brought by some snack cakes that day and some of the more sensitive children had gotten a bit hyperactive from the influx of sugar, this being why Father never actually liked it when his friend Gaius attempted to be generous.  Morgan had immediately fetched water and bandages.  Noting how unfazed he was from the blood and the crying, Father chose that day to start teaching him the medical arts.

 

First he was schooled on the basics. If Morgan wanted to learn how to heal, he first needed to learn basic physical first-aid.  Both his mother and his father shared with him books upon anatomy with drawings and diagrams of bodies and parts, and lists of horrible diseases with funny names.  He learned how to clean and to bandage a cut.  He even set a bone once in a wounded stray cat that Sally and Sue had found lingering around the household trash cans.  The animal had mended and became one household pet among many - “Mr. Muffin.” 

 

It was only after he’d learned the physical and direct basics that Father had let him practice with staves.  Magic-healing was instant, but was not always better.  It depended upon a patient’s condition.  Staves worked to clean and seal wounds if their magic was applied within a certain amount of time after the injury had been sustained.  This is why they were the healing-method of choice in dangerous locales, such as battlefields.  They did not work as well with illnesses or infections, or if a wound was hours old. The effectiveness of a given stave upon a case of poisoning was iffy.  They worked best in regenerating burns and in sealing up open punctures and cuts.  Staves, themselves, had to be intensely practiced-with in order for one to use higher-level models that allowed healing from distance or higher-level cures.  They did not bring back the dead, nor did they regenerate lost parts. 

 

Although the energy of healing was “a gift from the gods to everyone” – which meant that even people who had fallen of the path of righteousness could access it if they had learned the craft, working it was supposed to have a greater effect if one’s heart was close to the will of the gods.  Morgan did not think that he would ever become as good a magic-healer as his father was because he was always fidgety during family and group prayer-times.  He found it difficult to stay still enough to concentrate upon the blessings of Naga when he’d just wanted to go outside and play.  Still, he tried to learn his best how to be a priest from his father because he liked helping people. 

 

The first time he’d ever used a stave to heal a human being; the patient had been his father.

 

“Gah! Ah!” 

 

Morgan had been hanging out in his father’s messy art-room watching him carve wooden toys. His carving knife had slipped and he’d given himself a nasty cut across one hand. He let it bleed and shook the blood loose as Morgan grabbed a simple Heal stave that rested along one of the walls.  The boy didn’t even think about what he was doing or if he was “ready” to do it as he quietly held the end of the stave and gently guided his father’s hand into the energy-field. 

 

“Look at that, Morgan…” Father had said.  “Exactly like that! Bless you, son.”

 

Morgan was amazed as he watched his father’s skin knit back together.  The blood slowed and stopped.  Soon, the hand was like it had been before, whole and pain-free. He laughed for joy at being able to do this correctly.  He silently praised Naga for putting up with his easily-distracted heart. 

 

Morgan had learned a dark side to the healing arts, however, beyond the general pain and fluids involved from sickness and injury.  Father had shown him moves with axes upon training dummies and told him about how knowing the workings of bodies gave one the knowledge necessary to kill someone cleanly, with a minimum of misery. His mother, likewise, had spoken to him of the finer points of swords and elemental magic and about how she’d learned from his father how to kill more efficiently.  It wasn’t a business that either of him wanted him to ever be involved in, yet they felt like he should know how to defend himself and anyone weaker than himself if he were ever met with a dangerous situation. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

His father and his mother had met and fallen in love fighting alongside each other in the elite force of the Exalt’s army – the Shepherds.  According to the war-stories, Mother had been found in a field by Uncle Chrom after she’d been overpowered and waylaid by a group of bandits outside of Southtown while traveling to Ylisstol.  He and Auntie Lissa had helped her and she’d shown her tactical prowess when they’d caught up to those same bandits raiding Southtown. Father had joined the Shepherds after former Exalt Emmeryn had been assassinated.  He’d been in an order of fighting-monks who’d caught wind of the plot on her life but had arrived at the palace too late. That is, he had been the one to arrive too late, as his group had been intercepted by a Plegian war-party and he’d been the sole survivor.  He’d never forgiven himself for not being strong enough to save his brothers and for not making enough haste to save the sacred Exalt. 

 

The two had ended up serving in what had since been called Mad Gangrel’s War together. Father served primarily as a medic and chaplain, while Mother served primarily as the chief tactician for the Ylissean forces, although she was confident enough in her magic and swordsmanship to put herself on the front lines of many battles.  She’d asked nothing of her troops that she did not demand of herself, in her words.  Neither of Morgan’s parents liked to talk about the war much, even though he liked to ask. 

 

The stories were unreal to him.  It was difficult to imagine either his kind mother or his gentle father stabbing and beheading people.  He’d seen what they could do to training dummies with a single thrust or heft, but he still found the notion surreal. The hands of his parents were hands that salved bruises and held storybooks.  His father even dressed up in paper crowns and pretended to be a fairy princess from those kinds of stories to entertain him and his many siblings. To think of Mother and Father as warriors was weird even though he knew it was the truth. 

 

“Despite all of his prayers and supplication to Naga,” his mother had said one afternoon when he was sitting with her at her writing desk, “your father does not know if he is going to find peace in the afterlife.  He considers himself ‘bloody.’  I’m the same way. Many people have died at our hands. It’s not a nice thing to think about. It’s a painful burden to bear.”

 

“I still want to learn battle-tactics, Mother!” Morgan had insisted.  “I mean, I don’t really want to ever have to go to war, but if it happens, I’d like to know to plan for it!”

 

“Why do you want to learn my skills so badly?” Mother had then ventured.  “It’s not just so you can win all the fortress snowball fights in the winter, is it? Or the mudball fights in the summer rain?”  

 

“No, Mother. I want to learn the real stuff.  I want to learn it because… because it saves lives.”  

 

Mother had smiled sadly.  “You are aware that war is about killing people and destroying their stuff, Morgan.”

 

“Yes, but… you saved the entire Ylissean army!  Uncle Chrom gave you all those medals!  You saved innocent lives and kept the soldiers alive! I want to be able to do that!” 

 

“Are you sure you don’t just want to stick to healing?” she’d asked.  “Your father has saved countless lives, too – often after my mistakes got people hurt.”

 

“I want to know everything, Mother!” 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Peace lasted in Ylisse for several years before troubles arose in the neighboring continent of Valm.  In a different timeline, one that would be changed, the peace had lasted a mere two years, but in the world that Morgan knew growing up in the orphanage, it had lasted blessedly longer.  However, Destiny was a determined beast.  Mother’s trips into Ylisstol became more frequent as rumors of Valm’s aggressions spread. 

 

Negotiations with the Khans of Regna Ferox failed and an invasion headed by a man known as Walhart the Conqueror was immanent.  Morgan’s parents were called up to service again as he was left with some of their cleric-friends and the teens who’d grown up with him who’d never been adopted out to take care of the orphanage. 

 

“Don’t go!” he’d cried when the news was handed down. “Why do you have to go? Why are you so eager to leave us?”  His sentiments were echoed by his siblings, both small and great. 

 

“I have a scared duty to the Exalt,” Father had explained.  “We are also doing this to keep all of you safe.”

 

“But…but! You’ll get the nightmares again! And you might… not come home!”

 

“Morgan,” his mother explained matter-of-factly, “Ylisse will fall to ruin without a good strategist to guide Lord Chrom in his command.  I have sworn loyalty to him and besides that; he is my best friend – like you and Lucina.”

 

“But… Can’t I fight with you?  I’m getting really good at tactics!” 

 

“No, Morgan, you are needed here.” 

 

His father sighed.  “No tears, Morgan.  We will be home as soon as we can.” 

 

They did come home at intervals.  The war in Valm drew on, necessitating leave for various members of the Ylissean League for the sake of their sanity and to restock supplies.  Mother and Father came home on leaves that were much too short for Morgan’s liking.  He tried to enlist in the army of his own accord just to come along to help protect them, but was denied entry due to his youth.  Joining was forbidden at age twelve – if he wanted to be a solider, he had to wait until he was at least sixteen.  When he wasn’t at home, he was in Ylisstol, watching a frustrated Princess Lucina practice furiously with swords and argue with her guardians about her own desire to fight at her father’s side. 

 

As soon as the Conqueror was defeated and the Valm War had come to an end, another war started.  Tensions with Plegia rose again.  His mother’s bloodlines had been found out and the new king of Plegia, Validar, who claimed to be her father, demanded her back from being “kidnapped and brainwashed.”  Mother had no desire to be heir to the Plegian crown.  She had been raised in Ylisse and was a loyal member of Lord Chrom’s political stable.  The politics of the situation were complicated – so much so that Mother could not just give herself over for the greater good.  Validar wanted no less than her, the Fire Emblem and war and, it was rumored, he also wanted no less than the resurrection of the God of Annihilation, the Fell Dragon, Grima.  This was something that the children of Naga were not apt to allow to happen. 

 

Morgan was staying in the royal palace when his parents parted from him again.  The full compliment of the Shepherds save for Auntie Lissa left on a “negotiations summit” with King Validar that they were sure was going to turn into a fight.

 

He was trying to content himself with reading in the study his mother kept in the castle when the long-awaited sound of armored horses and announcing trumpets roused him from his half-slumber.  He ran down the stairs pell-mell until he suddenly stopped upon seeing Lucina in the throne room in tears before Sir Fredrick.  The knight was handing her an object – a sheathed sword.  The Falchion… Why was Fredrick handing Lucy her father’s sword? 

 

His chest felt tight.  There was only one reason why she’d be given such a gift.  The girl clutched the weapon and ran right past him, sobbing and screaming. 

 

Instead of following her, Morgan felt compelled to approach Fredrick.  “Sir Fredrick?” he asked.

 

“Um.  Young Master Morgan,” he grunted.

 

“Is it true?” Morgan asked, eyes wide.  “You… you just gave Lucina…”

 

Sir Fredrick sighed deeply and shook his head.  “I am afraid that either Lissa or Lucina shall now have to take up the title of Exalt.”

 

“Uncle Chrom…”

 

“Indeed.  He was brave until the end.” 

 

“What of my mother and father, Sir Fredrick?  Are they home? Did they at least…come home? And everyone else?” 

 

“We lost many of our number before we managed a retreat.” Fredrick said gravely. “Some of us are missing.” 

 

He turned and nodded to Sumia and Cordelia, who walked up behind him.  Morgan stood staring in stark horror at the objects the two Pegasus-knights carried with them.  Cordelia knelt before him and presented him with his father’s best Mend-staff.  The boy could not feel his body as he held out his hands numbly to receive it.  Sumia presented him with a carefully-folded coat – his mother’s robe. 

 

All he could do was to look up at the two of them and at Sir Fredrick with unshed tears and a trembling jaw. 

 

“Your mother…” Fredrick said slowly… “She is among the missing.  She might still be alive somewhere, but we do not have much hope, considering the nature of our newest enemy.” 

 

Cordelia put a hand upon his shoulder. “We brought your father home,” she said, letting water fall down her face. 

 

Morgan shook his head. “No… no…” he managed to squeak.  He threw his mother’s coat upon a spare chair and ran with the mending-staff outside to the wagons stationed in the royal courtyard.  There were shouts among the soldiers to stop him.  He hopped up into a supply-wagon to see a body draped in a sheet, but quickly turned away from it after seeing the shock of red hair sticking out from it.  He panted and his heart raced as he ran to another, slipping the grasp of Uncle Gregor.  He vaulted up into one of the other wagons.  A long lock of blond hair peeked out from beneath a bloody covering. 

 

The boy pulled the sheet back.  His father had always been fair-skinned, but he’d never seen him so pale.  His eyes were closed and his jaw was relaxed but Morgan would never have mistaken him for sleeping.  A bloom of red soaked through his robes and stained his midriff armor.  Without thinking, Morgan began to strip the top half of the bloody clothing off, exposing a neat and precise wound.  He put one hand over it as if he were trying to close it and he waved the mending-staff, channeling all of his will into it. 

 

“Wake up!” he screamed.  “Come on, Dad!  You can’t leave me like this! Come back! I can heal you… I can!  Come on!” 

 

He felt Aunt Sully grabbing him harshly by the shoulders and pulling him out of the wagon.  “You can’t do anything for him, kid, I’m sorry.” 

 

“Yes I can! Let me go!” Morgan shouted, kicking against her.  He tried to bite her arm. 

 

Lissa moved past them like a ghost, her eyes red.  “I’m sorry, Morgan,” she said as she got up into the wagon and replaced the sheet. 

 

Morgan struggled out of Sully’s grip and ran off, clutching the staff close.  He ran back into the palace and knelt before the chair where he’d tossed his mother’s robe.  Gingerly, he lifted it from the chair and put it on.  It was too big for him.  He stood up and the bottom of it reached the ground.  He took up the staff again and stared at the bloodied hand that held it. 

 

All he could think about in his grief-inebriated state was how neat the wound in his father’s chest was.  From what he knew of medicine, it was a clean thrust through the heart made by a sharp, strong sword.  Considering the lack of any other wounds that he could see, it was almost as if Dad had simply stood and taken it. 

 

He could feel the gaze of adults behind him.  He followed Auntie Lissa as she took him to a wash-basin to clean up.  He turned to her and softly told her; “I think I’d like to go pray.  Alone, okay?” 

 

“Yes… of course,” she answered. 

 

He dragged his feet walking into the Shrine to Naga that the palace kept.  He softly closed the door behind him and knelt before the altar. 

 

“Naga…” he began. 

 

He choked for a moment.  “Naga… why did this happen?  Is Father okay – wherever he is now?  Are you taking care of him like he always said you would?  What about Mother? What… why…” 

 

He broke down in sobs.  “Why did you take them from me?” he cried piteously.  “Why did you take them from us?  Didn’t they have enough living yet to do?  Everyone back home… what do I say?  We needed them!  Father prayed to you every day!  Why did you stop protecting him now?  Please, answer me!” 

 

Morgan looked up at the stately altar with the dragon-symbol behind it.  “Answer me, dammit!” 

 

Morgan stood up and looked down, trying to catch his breath.  He’d never heard voices in his life, just the voice in his heart that his father had always taught him about.  His mother would give respect to Naga and some of the other deities, but firmly believed that the world was changed through the work of human hands and invisible ties.  Whether those ties involved the gods or not did not seem to matter to her.  

 

As he stood still in the chamber, the silence around him was cold.  He wrapped his mother’s coat around himself to stave off the imaginary chill.  

 

“You aren’t even listening, are you?” he said. 

 

He watched a stray tear fall upon the blue carpet at his feet.  “If you are,” he choked out, “If you are listening… if any of you are listening… Forget you!  From this day forward, I am going to forget you!” 

 

He exited the chamber quietly and found Lucina, clutching the sheathed Falchion. 

 

“Morgan,” she said. 

 

“If you want to pray,” he said, “I’m done.” 

 

“Th-thank you.  M-Morgan…are you okay?” 

 

“Probably only as much as you are,” he said dully.    

 

“What are you going to do?” Lucina asked.  “I… I’m… expected to be the next Exalt…”

 

Morgan cleared his throat.  Lucina was only a few years his senior.  For her to shoulder an entire nation was much too heavy for someone so young.  Then again, he had his own responsibilities.  She still had Sir Fredrick at her side – and her mother had come home alive.  The Queen did not have the blood of the Exalted line, but could still be there for the princess. 

 

That was more than could be said of Morgan’s mother for him right now. 

 

“I will stay for the services,” Morgan said with a small, sad nod. “We will bury our fathers together.  And Uncle Gaius.  He came home in a wagon, too.  After that… I think I want to go home…”

 

“Are you sure? I heard that the orphanage is in good hands. You could always stay here… with me… if you need to.”

 

“No, Lucy… the younger kids need me… now that… now that…” 

 

Lucina hung the sword on her belt and hugged him.  They held each other and wept until they almost fell asleep against each other.  Each was ushered to their respective rooms later where neither of them could sleep the rest of the night.    

 

 

 

 

 

A week later, Morgan had packed and readied himself to leave Ylisstol.  Ultimately, he had lied.  A royal escort had taken him to the inroad leading to the orphanage.  He dismissed them, insisting that they leave him be to contemplate the news that he was to deliver in peace.  He looked to the southern horizon, to the dark clouds that had gathered and settled there, a storm that didn’t move.  He wondered what must be going on in Pelegia. He knew that the remaining Shepherds and the Ylissean army would be marching again on it soon. 

 

He also knew that his mother had gone missing in that country and though she had been left for dead, there was a chance that she could be alive.  He wrapped his coat around himself and kept walking.  He walked away from the orphanage road and kept a steady march, his bag of travel-rations and supplies in tow, southward. 

 

He did not keep track of the day he’d crossed the Plegian-border.  Borders where invisible, anyway.  The country grew sandy and the skies were progressively dark.  Plegia was supposed to be a sunny nation, a desert-country, but the skies appeared to be perpetually threatening rain.  Everything stayed dry, however.  Morgan wondered if the storm-skies were the result of fire – an out of control conflagration. 

 

It was in a lonely, bone-strewn valley that he met up with his mother. 

 

“Mother!” Morgan cried, running to her.  She paid him no attention.  As soon as he got up close to her, he stopped.  She had recovered a new coat just like the one he’d been wearing in her memory – a fresh Plegian hierophant’s robe.  Her eyes took on a red cast in the dim light. 

 

“Morgan…my son…” she said in a dark voice that did not sound like her. 

 

“Mother?  Are you alright?  If you’re sick… I… I brought one of Father’s staves!  Father… do you know about him?  He…” 

 

“I am not ill,” his mother said. “In fact, I am healthier than ever.  I have come into immortality.  Would you like to join me, Morgan?”

 

“I don’t follow… Mother?  Why are you staring at me like that? Why are your eyes shining?”

 

“I have fulfilled my destiny, Morgan,” she said slowly.  “I have found my true god.” 

 

“Found a god?  Listen, mother… Father…” 

 

“Your father was a fool.” 

 

“Mother?” 

 

“Tell me, Morgan… he followed Naga, did he not?  Where is your father now, Morgan?”

 

Morgan caught his breath.  “He… he was buried in the Royal Military Cemetery.  He is… he is… what is left off him is in the ground.”

 

“Precisely, my son.  Naga failed to save him.  He was weak and so was she.”

 

“Mother!” Morgan quailed, “How can you say such things?  You loved Father!”

 

“I once loved Father… but he was wrong.  I am now the embodiment of Grima. Your mother gave her heart to the dragon.  Think about it, Morgan.  Everything dies.  Naga does not save from death. Destruction will always be stronger than Creation. All Light comes to Darkness.  Only Grima brings the world to its honest destiny.  Have you not felt the truth, my son?”

 

“I… I suppose so,” Morgan said slowly.  “I turned my back on Naga when I left Ylisstol. I am tired of talking to gods who don’t give an answer back.” 

 

“A god stands before you, Morgan… and she is also your mother.  Do you not want your mother, Morgan?” 

 

Morgan stepped back.  “I… I don’t know.”     

 

“I was merciful, you know,” she answered him.  “There was no way that your father was going to accept Fate.  He tried to save the pathetic scraps of the weak human part of me from Destiny!  He tried to stop the path my heart had chosen.  He chased me down and found me when the others could not.  He called out ‘Fight it! Fight it!’ to me.  He tried to remind my vessel of the prayers they’d said together and time he’d spent teaching her how to paint!  How pathetic! I let him approach closely and I ran him through with a steel sword. I left him for his pitiable friends to find, on the cold floor of one of the inner rooms of Plegia Castle!  I could have tortured him for his defiance of a god right in front of him, but I did not.  I sent him to his weary gods.”

 

“I can’t believe this, Mother!” 

 

“The world howls in anguish, awaiting saviors that never come.  Don’t you think it’s time for everything that exists to be put out of its misery?  Ask your heart, Morgan – what is for the greater good?”  

 

“…” 

 

“Don’t you want to spend time with your mother?  If you get lonely for siblings, I can make a twin for you out of a small amount of your blood and bone.”

 

“You will have time for me, Mother?” 

 

“Time enough to last, my son…All the time in the world.” 

 

And so a lonely young Morgan left the faith of his father. He followed his mother into the windblown dust, his heart given to a new god. 

 

 

 

 

**END.**

**Shadsie, 2016 (what a cruddy damn year!)**

_I really need to get off this Awakening kick and get back to my “native fandom,” The Legend of Zelda. I’m sure there are at least a few Zelda fans that miss me._


End file.
